


Alterstone

by faufaren



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Injury, Brainwashing, Corruption, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, Manipulation, Possession, Sadness everywhere, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), Swordblight AU, Tragedy, Whump, Worldbuilding, like being expected to save the world, mention of child abuse in military context, what happens when teenagers grow up under heavy societal pressure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29507346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faufaren/pseuds/faufaren
Summary: Link has always sacrificed himself. For Hyrule’s people. For Hylia, his goddess. For his beloved princess, Zelda. In the battle at Fort Hateno, Link is taken by Calamity.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 115





	1. Bladeshine

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Swordblight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18686230) by [SpaceMalarkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceMalarkey/pseuds/SpaceMalarkey). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for a description of selective mutism in action towards the end of this chapter, if anyone needs it. I’ve largely based it off my own experiences with it, and what it feels like when it happens to me.

Every child in Hyrule has grown up on the tales of the Hero and his Goddess. The ten-thousand year old legend that Hyrule proudly preserves as a part of its rich history, telling the story of the warrior with a hero’s spirit and the princess who carries the blood of the goddess Hylia. 

The royal archives have records of an age of great technological advancement occurring somewhere in Hyrule’s history, some ten millennia past. Among the new technologies produced in that time are the autonomous legions of Guardians and the four Divine Beasts, crafted as safeguards against Ganon’s dark forces. They, along with the princess’s sacred powers, have kept the lands safe from evil, time and time again. 

This is the foretold story. But now, tensions are rising. 

It starts with the death of the Queen. 

With Ganon’s return looming upon the chronological horizon, the duty of sealing away and protecting the lands of Hyrule from this imminent threat falls to the young Princess Zelda, the next of her ancestral line of Goddess-blessed maidens. That such a great task has fallen upon the small shoulders of a six-year-old child – who had no one but her late mother’s notes and a sense of duty impressed upon her by the people in her life to guide her training – is a source of great unrest for the people of Hyrule. 

So it is decided: the kingdom needs a Hero. The Hero in the stories of old has always protected the one who carries the blood of the Goddess. The Hero never fails to appear in the kingdom’s times of need, which this, they consider, is such a time. The Hero has always come armed with great courage, divine destiny, and the Master Sword.

* * *

Link is the first-born son of a Royal Knight, brought into an era where the threat of Ganon’s reawakening approaches ever steadily. As such, he is expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. 

When he is born, his mother manages to make herself stay together long enough to be the first to hold him. A whisper upon her ear, and she utters his chosen name just as she takes her last breath. 

When he is three, his father hands him his first training sword. 

The creed of the Royal Guard is taught to him alongside his numbers. Members of the Guard are faithful to the Royal Family. The Guard are extensions of the goddess’s sacred will. As a four-year old child, the grip of a sword in his hands feels more comfortable and familiar than the toys he sees other children his age play with. 

He, too, like every other kingdom-born child, knows by heart the ten-thousand year old legend. 

The Hero is powerful, fierce, and loyal. The Hero protects the princess with their entire being. They serve the people of Hyrule, and unifies the lands against strife. They are courageous and abiding, and there is no opponent too great for them to overcome. The Hero wields the Master Sword. 

Link is six years old when he wanders a little too far into the woods. 

He is six years old when he pulls the Master Sword under the solemn gaze of the Great Deku Tree. 

It is almost too long for him to carry. His hands can just barely wrap around the sword’s hilt. Its point drags heavily on the ground. The Deku Tree says to him something he does not understand at the time, and it will be more than a hundred years later until he will. Link looks at the pedestal from which the Master Sword had been sealed, moss and fern and long centuries of weathering splayed over its aged surface, and can’t help but think of an altar. 

His father nearly has a heart attack at the sight of his young son emerging from the Lost Woods, a legendary blade dragging in the dirt behind him. His colleagues, who had been helping the man search for his child, gawk in disbelief. 

The Hero has appeared.

* * *

From there, Link’s life takes a turn. As soon as word gets out to the King, Link is sent to the royal military academy for training. 

It is hard. He endures grueling training and countless trials, spits blood on the training fields in boiling heat, swings his blade in mindless exhaustion. He spars for hours every day against different individuals until every mock battle becomes another repetitive action in debilitating tedium. He cries sweat and heaves vomit when his body can’t take it any longer. 

Countless sleepless nights are spent on battle tactics and war strategies, protocols and honor codes and Knight etiquette, that his mentors do their best to etch into his young mind. Countless nights spent rolling in his bed, kept awake by overexerted muscles and bruises on top of bruises, sore on top of sore. 

It is hard. But everyday he faces the fact that his kingdom is depending on him to become the Hero they need him to be. The sight of the Master Sword greets him at every dawning sun, and it is a constant reminder of his duty to the Hylian Kingdom, his faith in his Goddess, his future by the Princess’s side. 

In training he’s collapsed countless times, but he has never allowed himself to stay down. At multiple points, he wants nothing more than to drop to the ground and cry in frustration, in sheer crippling exhaustion. Many times, he thinks _this is it. This is where they break me._ But every time, without fail, he stays on his feet, fueled by the singular thought of what he is meant to be. 

The sword of Hylia. The hope of Hyrule. 

Link is wrong, though he doesn’t know this. His breaking point has already come – and gone.

* * *

At the age of six, Link was a child swimming in the oversized sleeves of his great destiny. The Master Sword thrust upon the tiny hands of a young boy. Many people had looked at him in apprehension, in incredulity. First the responsibility of a Goddess had fallen to the young Princess, and now the role of the Hero is given to another child. It seemed like a farce, like a practical joke played on them by the gods. The fate of the entire land resting in the little palms of two children. 

Link endures the disappointment of his peers. The badly-concealed scorn of his superiors. Unreachable expectations from the crown. The Master Sword shouldn’t have chosen you, they all say. 

But as the years pass, they start saying different things. Link’s skill grows at exponential, frightening rates. He soaks up the art of battle like it is made for him, like all he’s ever known is the fight. It is. People start to look at him with surprise, and then with wary acceptance. 

At thirteen, Link achieves full mastery over the Master Sword. There is now no one in the kingdom who can beat him in a fair fight. He trains and trains, and by the time he realises it, people are looking at him with such clear faith in their expressions he doesn’t know what to think of it. By the time he’s had the chance to notice, he’s stopped speaking altogether. 

Sixteen. Link takes his place by Princess Zelda’s side. 

She is displeased, he can tell from the glum note in her voice when she knights him in ceremony. It doesn’t improve much from there. 

The Princess only has derision and harsh words to offer to him. She does her best to push him away, and when that doesn’t work, tries very hard to ignore that he is there altogether. 

Link takes this in stride, with the practiced ease of many years enduring the jealousy of his peers and the severe gazes from his senior knights. 

His drill sergeants broke him in within the first six months of boot camp. He knows how to handle his superiors screaming in his face, telling him how much of a failure he is, how the sword has chosen wrong, how he will never live up to the kingdom’s expectations. This is how they fortified his mind, shaped him to follow orders better, and made him a stronger soldier. 

His princess’s offended attitude towards him rattles him, but he does not let it affect his duty.

* * *

Zelda does not like her guard. 

He is too quiet, too stoic. He is like an automaton, any sign of a human soul absent in the wake of devotion and vigilance. 

If she must have a guard, Zelda had expressed to her father many times, she would wish for a companion. 

Instead, her father appoints her a weapon. That is what he truly seems to be. For all that the Royal Knight called Link appears to be made of blood and bone, more than that, ultimately, firstly, he acts as her sword and shield. 

He is incredible. He is too much of a good soldier. He is so very capable, a master of many skills. 

He acts so cold, so indifferent, so empty, and it rankles to know that her knight does not feel anything for the princess he has sworn to protect. That the one which she is fated to someday save Hyrule together with looks stoic and unmoved in her presence. 

He is perfect. He never seems to make any mistakes. His devotion to his princess and his goddess is so obvious and pure, Zelda almost can’t believe someone like him exists. He stirs such immense shame in her heart, for her own shortcomings – for the way her advisors regard her with disappointment, her handmaidens with pity, and her father only scolds her for not being the valiant and steady princess she is meant to be – that sometimes she can’t bear to look at him. 

The people call him Hyrule’s hope. Though youthful, he upholds every value of the Hylian Kingdom to the utmost degree. He has such an instinct to guard, protect, and give, that it humiliates Zelda down to the marrow. He is everything she isn’t. He is everything she wants to be.

She scorns him for it. For the way Link had so readily accepted and molded himself flawlessly into the role of the Hero he’d been given, while she spends day and night praying uselessly, searching for that spark of light her mother had told her would surely be there and yet eludes her at every attempt. She hates him for the way he follows her doggedly across Hyrule when her only desire is to be left in peace, to get the chance to prove herself outside of his overbearing shadow. 

And above all, she loathes how he stands still and takes it, all resolute and grim. For all the poisonous words she says to him, Link doesn’t speak a single thing, doesn’t even blink at the verbal heat. He’ll stand there before her and won’t even lift a hand to defend himself. 

That, out of everything, makes her hurt the worst. The thing about heroes, she thinks, is that they hit back. Enduring it quietly – it doesn’t make him seem like a hero. It makes him a victim.

* * *

Link doesn’t know what to do. 

His years of training do him no good now, not when he has no idea how to interact with people outside of exchanges of services, business, or duty. He doesn't even know how to make his Princess comfortable, how to make her smile or at least feel at ease with him. 

She doesn’t like to be around him, he knows this. She doesn’t like that he follows her, but he is the princess’s escort. It is his responsibility to keep her safe. If it would make her more comfortable, he would render himself invisible; if it were possible, he would erase his presence in her life and protect her from afar. He has no idea how to fix this situation, or how to be better. 

What do you need of me, Princess? What can I do to help? he longs to ask, in misery, in agony, because he’ll do it, no matter how much it hurts, no matter what the cost is to him, if it will make her smile again. Ask me anything, except to leave you. 

A lifetime of training, and Link has already failed before he’s even begun.

* * *

The other Champions are leagues beyond him. They are each strong, powerful, and fierce in a way that Link doesn’t think he has ever been, or can ever be. Even Mipha, with her gentle grace and endless mercy. Or perhaps especially Mipha, because kindness like hers is not easily kept. 

People flock to them naturally. When they speak, people listen. When they stand, people look to them for direction. They are born leaders of their respective communities, like bonfires and hearths, burning bright in the world. Next to them, he is no more than a single sputtering candle.

At least Zelda seems to have a better relationship with them than she has with him. Urbosa particularly, with her passion and wisdom, appears to have a longer and closer bond to Zelda that he cannot even begin to compare. Urbosa is loud and perceptive and does not do things in halves, and perhaps that is why Zelda likes her so much. Link certainly can see why. 

He does not get along with Revali. That is okay. Revali is caustic towards the other champions on a good day. His disdain towards Link in particular seems to stem from the fact that the Rito Champion believes Link undeserving of the leading role he’s been given, when all he’s done is pull some sword from a stone. Link doesn’t tell him about multiple nights spent laying sleeplessly in bed fearing the same thing. 

Revali is a warrior who has fought hard and long to get to where he is. Link can respect that, no matter how deep some of his remarks may strike. 

Daruk is different. He offers protection and support freely and with such ease that Link doesn’t know what to do with it at first. His capacity to care for his precious people seems to be infinite, and Link doesn’t know what he’s done to be included among that crowd but he knows he can always trust in his goron brother on the battlefield.

* * *

Zelda slips his watch. 

Link nearly loses his sanity tracking her down, worried sick for her safety, wracked with anxiety, until he finds her in the middle of an enemy cluster, bracing herself beneath a Yiga footsoldier about to bring down their sickle blade. 

Never has he run so hard, nor moved so fast. His mind hasn’t even caught up to the present before his blade is drawn in his hand and the Yiga soldier is dead at his feet. He faces the rest of the Yiga and sinks into position in front of his Princess, feels the weight of her gaze upon him, and hopes that she does not notice how his hand trembles around the Master Sword. If he’d been just a second too late… 

Something changes that moment, after the battle is won. Zelda looks at him in introspection, instead of scorn, and Link thinks that maybe she had seen – the truth of himself, the truth that Link is not courageous at all, that he trembles with fear at the thought of losing her and failing his duty. Maybe it’s time that she realises how unworthy he is of the legacy he’s been given. 

Instead, she asks him a question. “How did you find me so fast?” she asks. 

And Link tries to answer. He does try his hardest. If he can’t give his Princess anything else, then at least he can answer such a simple question. 

But the words stick in his throat, his tongue tangles. He knows he can do sounds – his battle cries and reactive noises are proof enough that his voice still exists. Words are the things that won’t come. His mouth opens, lips part, lungs draw in air, only for everything to get lodged somewhere in the center of his chest. The more he tries to say something, say anything, the more his mind loses the syllables of what he actually wants to say. 

Zelda now looks at him in dawning recognition, in sudden understanding, as Link helplessly tries to speak. 

“You can’t speak,” she realises. 

No. He can’t. But he thought he could, if only for her. Inadequacy burns in his gut even as Link closes his mouth and touches his throat lightly, gaze lowering to the ground in shame. It is hard to feel strong when your own body won’t listen to what you want it to do. 

“Do you sign?” she asks, and the gentleness with which she says this startles him. 

It shouldn’t. Zelda has always had gentleness in her heart. It is what makes her feel fragile and lacking next to her perception of the hero, feeling that part of herself quiver with self-doubt, and causing her to lash out in defense. It is this gentleness that comes out when she sees Link protect her with all the power and devotion in his being, and then struggle so wretchedly to speak to her. 

Link does not know how to sign. He’s never been taught. Neither has Zelda. 

_I thought you hated me_ , Zelda wants to say, in regret. _I thought you refused to talk to me because I’m a disappointment._

And then she smiles, at him. “Perhaps we can learn together?”


	2. Mortarpestle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for injury descriptions for the second half of this chapter. Fair amount of /blud/ imagery. I don’t know what other people’s standards are for what’s graphic and what’s not, so here’s a warning just in case.

They bond. Over the course of their journey, inspecting the Divine Beasts and traveling across Hyrule to study the shrines, Zelda finds herself opening up to her knight, and he to her. Between regional trips and Zelda’s half-secret research, they pore over books filled with tiny drawings of hand signs. They memorize sign after sign, page after page, so that Link may have a voice. 

And this knowledge is shared among the rest of the Champions, so that Link may communicate to them. They all seem to take up the task readily like it is a mission of utmost importance. In the scant spaces between Link’s training, Zelda’s prayers, and the champions’ individual duties, they practice with each other. It yields some interesting results, in the beginning. 

‘What is your favorite sock,’ Link signs. 

And Zelda replies, ‘I’ve never had a pet clock before.’ 

‘rock great taste,’ Daruk awkwardly signs through his struggle in finagling his bulky hands into the appropriate positions. 

‘Haven’t you ever had a very sad rainbow stomach?’ Mipha shapes out the words with great care. 

Yes,’ Urbosa agrees. ‘Armchairs.’ 

‘What the everlasting name of Hylia are you all talking about,’ Revali signs at them in abject confusion. Surprisingly, he is the most fluent of them so far. As soon as Link’s mutism was revealed to the Champions, Revali had thrown himself into the challenge of learning a new language like it had personally offended him. Perhaps not so surprising, then. 

Eventually, they get better at it.

* * *

Things are better. Link finds himself participating in actual conversation, at least with Zelda and his fellow Champions. With an avenue of communication now made available to him, he finds himself smiling and laughing and sharing more of himself with them. 

No longer are the Champions intimidating, untouchable figures in the distance. And no longer is he the silent, stoic statue within their midst, a spot of cold in a warm room. 

They’ve enfolded him into their cluster, treating him as one of their own. He feels – welcomed. For so long, Link has been held at arm’s length, at first avoided out of disgruntlement in his earlier years and then put on a metaphorical pedestal in his teens. Is this what acceptance feels like? Wow. He is still in constant amazement at these recent developments.

* * *

It is at this point that Zelda finds herself wondering at a question: How old is Link? 

She knows he had drawn the Sword at a young age. But how young, exactly? Once she’d asked the Captain of the Guard about it. The man isn’t quite certain either. All he knows is that Link had been in training for about ten years before being appointed as her personal guard. At the end of it, he assures her, like she’d needed the reassurance, Link had been more than qualified for his position. She leaves him soon after that, a little disturbed. 

Even her own father doesn’t know. It is like no one had ever thought to ask. This bothers her greatly. More so because she herself is amongst those who had never bothered. She’s always just assumed that he is _old enough._ Old enough to perform his duties as a knight. To fight for her. To die for her. 

She thinks back to her initial treatment of him in the beginning, and his uncanny response to it. 

Every person has a selfish desire to push back against something they feel is unfair, she thinks. And for certain, her treatment of her knight had been very unreasonable. But Link had just taken it quietly. And, she speculates grimly, he probably still will. She wonders if anyone else has noticed how Link never says no to anyone, non-verbally or otherwise. 

How young had he been when he pulled the sword and shouldered the burden of Hyrule’s safety, that the basic instinct to defend himself was smothered out of him? 

The day she learns that Link is the same age as her is the same day she finds out why words don’t come to him anymore. At this point, they’ve learned enough sign between them for Link to paint the full picture for her. 

Age six. A pulled sword. The cryptic words of a tree. The sudden weight of an intangible thing called destiny, for all that it felt crushing. Impossible standards set by the King, his superiors, his fellow knights-in-training, and the expectations of all the people in the kingdom whom he’s never met. Pushing his body beyond its limits to be the perfect Hero. Being punished when he couldn’t. Disappointment a heavier blow than any physical instrument can manage. 

Being taught to give himself in servitude to the Hylian Kingdom, to his Princess. To become the faithful tool of his Goddess. To give, selflessly and completely, when he had nothing left but himself to give. 

All the years he’s lived since wandering out of the forest with a sword in his young hands – like a needle and thread slipping through his lips, pulling tight. 

At the end of it all, Zelda doesn’t know what to say. What can she say, really? She has discovered that the Hylian Champion Link is no different than herself, faced by an overwhelming fate of his own. Plagued by insecurity. Fearing failure at every turn. Pushing on in spite of themselves, for the sake of their kingdom and every burden laid upon their shoulders. 

In the end, all Zelda can do is pull Link into a hug.

* * *

Little by little, bit by bit, Link’s words start to detangle themselves from the knot in his throat. They come at moments when he is at his most comfortable state, when he knows he is safe both physically and mentally. Moments when he knows, with utmost certainty, that he can be vulnerable. 

Syllables and singular words rise to his tongue unwittingly, right alongside the signs he makes with his hands. Until one day, in the privacy of the open road, with just the two of them, Link finally lets loose a couple of those words. The look on Zelda’s face is indescribable. 

Overcome with joy, they realise he can speak aloud once more, at least when he is in the presence of the ones he trusts. 

The first time Link says something out loud in front of the Champions, Daruk nearly bursts into tears.

* * *

Zelda’s seventeenth birthday. 

Calamity awakens. 

The guardians are called forth, and swiftly corrupted by Malice. The Champions fight. Hyrule is trampled to the ground. 

Though she’d avoided getting her hopes up at Lanaryu’s shrine, somehow Zelda still tastes that crushing regret, that self-blame, that sense of abject uselessness while she watches her companions fight furiously for the kingdom. 

Hylia’s sacred light, sitting uselessly in her veins. She curses at it – at her Goddess, at her mother and grandmother who’d told her that she would feel that light in time. But most of all, she curses herself. Useless. Useless. 

They don’t even make it to the castle. Malice has spread to the Divine Beasts, and the Champions are forced to abandon their charge in order to hold off the destruction of the rampaging infected Beasts. 

Link and Zelda ride for Fort Hateno now. Hyrule’s next greatest stronghold, beyond the ones closest to the castle, which have been overrun and destroyed by mere proximity. Fort Hateno has always been well-armed and supplied, protected by its surrounding terrain. There, they hope, is where they can regroup and restrategize. 

Zelda’s heart aches deeply when she sees the shattered sight of her kingdom. Burning buildings and broken walls. Military outposts reduced to rubble. The historical landmark Lon Lon Ranch, collapsed beneath countless infected guardians. Empty homes and smashed husks of villages, bodies strewn across the landscape. 

There are too many to count. Hundreds, it seems. Thousands, even. Soldiers still wearing charred armor, civilians in bloodstained cloth. All killed indiscriminately without a second thought by monsters and guardians alike. They will receive no grave, she thinks bleakly, because at this rate there may as well be no one left to give them a proper burial. 

They’ve barely reached the Fort when it becomes clear that there is no viable path to actually get to it. No path except through the horde of guardians crawling over the plain sprawled out before them. 

So Link braces himself, raises his sword, and clears the way.

* * *

Sometimes Link wonders if perhaps it would’ve been better if he were born as a weapon. Many times while he’d travelled the land with Zelda, he had looked at the ancient technology that the kingdom hoped to harness in preparation for Ganon’s return, and he’d thought, _what if?_

Replace skin with sheets of steel. Brittle bone with iron. Joints of metal. Armored flesh. It would be nice, maybe, if he were composed of stronger stuff than breakable meat. After all, does the Hylian Champion need anything else, other than to be the vessel of the Hero’s spirit? Does he need flesh hands to wield the Master Sword? 

If nothing else, he thinks it would have made things easier, to exchange his soft humanity for the efficacy of machine. 

And as he stands before the gleaming cerulean lenses of the guardians, surrounded by the corpses of the corrupted legion he’s already defeated, he is reminded of these idle musings again. Before, he had convinced himself of their silliness, but now… 

Now his breath rattles in his lungs with a distinct wetness. One arm hangs slack and heavy from its socket. The Master Sword feels like a dead weight in his other hand, despite its singing steel. His fingers are practically welded to the hilt with how tightly he grips it, how hard he fights to keep it from slipping in the filth that covers him. He isn’t sure how much of it is mud, and how much of it is his own blood, streaming steadily from all the open wounds on his body. He thinks that they may have mixed into each other, creating a coating of blood-warmed slurry, slippery like none other. 

His head pounds, his ears ring, his ribs ache from an impact with a tree earlier on that had left his breath short and choppy. The taste of iron on his tongue. Everything numb with exhaustion. In that moment, Link finds himself all too aware of all the fragility in his human body. 

But he stays on his feet. Forces his wavering vision to focus. He continues on with the battle, because Zelda is behind him and he needs to protect her. Hylia’s power yet unawakened in her, and he knows it is Hyrule’s last chance of sealing Ganon away, of bringing peace and life back into the lands. He may be called Hyrule’s hope, but Zelda is its Future. 

He will get her to safety. In this, he cannot fail.

* * *

Link fights with some sort of wild, killer instinct that Zelda has only glimpsed a few times before, and very briefly at that. All the previous times he’s fought for her, the battles had been quick, brutal, and efficient. He’s had the professionality of a Royal Knight trained into him, one that tells him to keep the bloodshed away from his charge’s eyes, to minimise her exposure to the ugliness of battle. 

Now, though, all of that has been discarded, all energy and strength devoted to the singular desperation of keeping Zelda alive. Only sheer determination fuels his strikes, which grow sloppier by the second. She can tell Link is barely keeping himself on his feet, barely keeping his brain from dropping into deep unconscious out of pure self-preservation. 

“Stop! That’s enough!” She tries to tell him, heart trembling with something frighteningly close to hopelessness. “Please just save yourself! You’ve done enough for me, Link!” 

She has no idea how the other Champions are faring, if they still even live on. All she sees is this cruel battlefield with its wanton destruction and the dark smoke billowing into the sky. All she sees is the way her knight struggles to breathe through injury and exhaustion, running on the last dredges of fuel. She sees the way he still forces himself to fight for her sake. _Please don’t do this,_ she begs miserably, _I can’t lose you too._

But Link only grits bloodied teeth and drags her forward with his dislocated arm, toward the walls of Fort Hateno which still stand, so close they can see it in the distance. He throws himself completely into the fight with all the desperation of someone who knows they will not be making it out alive. She can read it in his tired, determined gaze. He thinks he will not survive this, and that thought fills her at once with fear and fury. 

Slowly, painstakingly, they cross the plain. They creep and shuffle along the ground, ducking behind rubble, scampering from cover to cover. Fighting when there’s no choice but to be spotted, and Link leaves a scattered trail of guardian corpses in their wake. 

They’re in the final stretch – Hateno’s fortifications looming high before them, the Hylian soldiers stationed there engaged in defending their walls, backed up by the Sheikah warriors in their midst. Already she can see that they’ve noticed their approach, that already, a few soldiers are making their way down towards them. 

They’re close. So very close. 

Not close enough. 

Two guardians, with the pink of Malice seething bright in their displays, turn their gazes on them. 

Zelda stumbles, hears the pitched _beep beep beepbeepbeep_ of both guardians charging up their attacks. She looks up. Two dots of blue, burning into her irises. Her gut swoops. 

And then Link steps in front of her. Nothing but himself to act as a shield. 

No. _No!_

She thinks she screams when the lasers ignite. The world explodes around her, and everything goes white.

* * *

When the world comes back, in shifting, stuttering steps, the first thing Zelda registers is how hot the ground is against her skin. The smell of ash hits her next. Her ears are ringing. 

Link. The thought has her shooting up from the dirt and casting about for her knight, heart in her throat, ignoring how her head spins and her stomach clenches in nausea at the abrupt motion. Only a faint gleam in the smoke has her turning her eyes in the right direction. 

The wind shifts, the smoke wafts apart. And there, blasted twenty feet away, propped up against a scorched tree trunk – there’s Link. Master Sword still clutched in his hand. 

Blood has darkened the earth around him. She hears him cough, a frail sounding thing, and more comes dribbling out of his mouth in sticky strands. His eyelashes flutter, his mudstained hair falling into his face, now fully loosened from its ties. _“Link,”_ she breathes, and he actually manages to summon enough strength to lift his head, incrementally, to look in her direction. 

A horrified sob falls from her lips, as she takes in the sight of him. He looks like he’s barely breathing. 

Something moves in the background. A single thread of Malice, twisting in the air with a current of magenta burning through it. Then more emerge out of the swirling dust, reaching wispy fingers towards the fallen body of her knight. 

“Princess!” 

The Sheikah soldiers have reached her. They pull her up to stand on shaky legs, try to pull her away. Their duty is to protect her. And Link looks like he’s already dead. 

“No, wait,” she begs, trying feebly to free herself from their clutches. _You can’t leave him. Don’t leave him behind, please,_ she wants to cry. But she can only watch in horror as Link seems to breathe his last, the blue flicker of his eyes finally falling closed, and the roiling miasma of Malice surges forward. 

Barely registering it, she lets the soldiers drag her away, pulling her into the safety of Fort Hateno’s walls. Her mind is a desolate landscape empty of everything except for the final sight she’d seen of Link. Consumed by the essence of Calamity, leaving nothing of him left. 

Her brave, blindingly, tragically loyal knight. With all the strength in his body, and all the determination in his soul, Link had given himself up to protect her. 

She can’t take her eyes off the spot where he’d sat, slumped over in the mud made by his own blood, and with a sudden realisation she finds that – oh – there is that light. 

That light she’s read about in her Mother’s journals, that she’s heard in the ancient stories, that she has prayed for years to come to her. The sacred light of the Goddess-blood she’s inherited has finally awakened in her, swirling in her chest, building up until she thinks that if she looked, she’d see it glowing through her skin. 

An explosion of her own, simply waiting to happen. And so she lets it happen.

* * *

Later, people will tell her that the light she’d released had been seen from all the four corners of the land. That it had halted the infected guardians enough that it gave them a chance to retaliate. Enough to turn the chances in their favor so they can fight off the enemy. They will tell her that surviving civilians fleeing the hordes had been guided to safety by it, that her light had given them new hope. 

But right now, all that Zelda thinks is this: What use is her power, when it’s come too late to save anyone? 

Link is gone. Hyrule has crumpled. Her people, cut down by Calamity’s infected forces. In a single stroke, she has gained the might of the Goddess, and lost the Kingdom she was supposed to protect.

* * *

Day comes. With it, the monsters and guardian attacks seem to recede, Calamity’s miasma drawing into itself around the spires of the fallen castle. In the light of day, Hylia is the one who reigns. 

To her relief, Zelda discovers that the other Champions are still alive. They haven’t succeeded in bringing down the Divine Beasts and the Blights that have emerged from them, but they’ve at least been able to usher their people to safety. 

It is Revali who retrieves the Master Sword from the edge of Blatchery Plain. The only thing that remains of the Hylian Champion. 

The remaining Champions regroup at the Fort. They don’t have time to mourn the loss of their sixth, but they wish they do. Link's absence in their group is a weeping, hollow wound. 

With Zelda’s newfound powers, they make their way across the land, gathering up anyone still surviving. The Sheikah join forces with them, and Hateno local militia add their strengths to the effort. Anyone with knowledge or background in weapons repair or construction is invaluable. Everyone pitches in for their survival. 

They send out Sheikah scouts and spies to find out what is happening outside their walls, to predict the movements of the monsters, and stay in contact with strongholds in the other regions. 

Together they make Fort Hateno their greatest stronghold against Calamity’s forces. 

Night falls, and they manage to defend the Fort against wave after wave of monsters and guardians. Zelda is there, with the blood of the Goddess, and Calamity will stop at nothing to try and tear her apart. She is there, and so Calamity’s full might rams up against their walls. 

Nights are long and weary. The fighting never seems to end. It is an endless siege, until the enemy numbers start dwindling and they realise that they have killed so many, Calamity is running out of bodies to throw at Fort Hateno. 

The Blood Moon, they know, is their greatest obstacle. On any night, the moon will rise and it’ll be crimson, and then they will know that all their efforts have been wasted. They pray that it won’t come, at least not _now_ , now when they have Calamity to deal with, but they know it is coming soon. The moon has not bled red since Calamity had risen. 

The night, they know, is ripe.


	3. Knightverge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you can forgive me for writing dialogue in bold. I've always been bothered by excessive bold text, but... I wanted calamity's voice to have a special weight to it. hence the bold. 
> 
> also, for those who got a notification for this chapter earlier: sorry, that was just my dumbass clicking post instead of preview...

At first, he doesn’t know what’s going on. The last thing Link can recall is the sight of Zelda being escorted into the Fort’s walls. He remembers the relief he’d felt, knowing that Zelda was now safe. His job is done, he remembers thinking, feeling content to finally give into the obliterating pain that had been throbbing throughout his entire body. 

And then he’d woken up in the darkness of his mind. Not dead, Link is somehow certain. 

He supposes it's only fair. It was presumptuous of him to think he deserved the mercy of rest while the rest of Hyrule continued on, suffering the consequences of his premature death. His duty as the Hero has not been fulfilled, after all. He hasn’t defeated Calamity Ganon yet. 

When Link wakes up, he’ll do better. Next time, he will not fail.

**What a broken, quiet thing you are.**

Everything freezes. _Who are you,_ Link thinks furiously. 

**You know who I am. The real question is – who are you?**

_What do you mean,_ Link asks. A small niggling feeling has started screaming in the back of his mind. He knows he shouldn’t answer any questions from this unknown presence, but the answers bubble out of him anyway. _I’m Link. I’m the Hylian Champion. Get out of my head._

**Wrong. I suppose it’s not a surprise that you don’t know who you are. But I know, Link. Oh, I do know.**

The way this new presence utters his name, sounding so intimate, so close, makes him shiver. It feels like his name is being felt out with auditory fingers, phonetic by phonetic, like a tongue running over the teeth of his name. 

**You are suffering, Link.**

_What?_ Link thinks, bewildered. _What’s that have to do with anything?_

**You are beyond unhappy. That is who you are. You suffer silently everyday of your life. For all the love your precious princess claims to favor you with, it’s a wonder how she doesn’t see the way your soul screams for mercy.**

_What is this,_ Link demands in livid defense. _Who are you._

Even in the oppressive darkness, Link can feel the presence smile. Feel the teeth being revealed, incisor by incisor. It chills him to the bone. 

**Do you know what happens when you scream into the void long enough, Link? It screams back.**

The slow revelation of what exactly this presence is sets cold horror into his heart. _You’re the Calamity,_ he realizes. Then he thrashes. _Get out. Get out!_

**I am. But I am also born of you. You cannot get rid of me, when I am also a part of you.**

_What do you mean,_ Link thinks again, and he feels the trailing fingers of distress slide down the nape of his neck. _I’m not suffering, not anymore. I was happy. I had friends. I was even talking. Everything was good until you came along and killed everything._

**Is that what you truly believe? Or is that what you’ve been fooled into thinking? Have you forgotten why you had ceased to speak in the first place? Ten years of trauma erased in the span of a few months spent with a pre-curated set of companions. If it really worked, I’d be impressed.**

_Shut the hell up,_ Link snarls. But he’s starting to see it. Despite himself, despite knowing that this is probably Calamity spitting lies into his brain, he can’t help but notice how everything that’s being said strikes so painfully true. He knows he has trauma. He knows that he hasn’t felt happiness in his life for the past ten years, and that the fragile, wet-winged thing he’s been nurturing in his heart throughout his time with the Champions isn’t anywhere near enough to make up for it. 

**See? Link, do you not realize how you’ve been used? Look at how your so-called great destiny was forced on you. You were so young, you could barely comprehend what was happening at the time.**

_No. Stop talking. I don’t want to listen to this._ Link tries desperately to reach for the thread of reality once more, but it slips through his grasp like a mirage. 

**Has anyone even asked if you wanted this? To be their Hero? Did you even get a choice at all?**

He tries to remember the faces of his friends, but they elude him. He tries to think of his Princess. What was her name again? 

**They made you terrified of failure. Doing anything to avoid their disappointment. Your choices completely torn away from you before you even understood what making choices meant. No wonder you don’t know who you are.**

_No, no,_ he cries feebly, feeling the edges of himself fraying and unraveling the more time he spends in this dark world. Now he realizes that it is not his mind. At least not anymore. How long has it been already? Minutes? Days? Weeks? 

**Broken down and built back up, into the perfect Hylian Champion that everyone requires you to be. Pitiful child.**

_Stop,_ Link whispers, feeling something dangerously delicate tremble in his chest at those cutting words. 

**You’ve sacrificed everything of yours to this wretched land, and what have they given you in return? What have you received, except a crushed will?**

_I don’t understand,_ is Link’s flicker of a thought, barely there anymore. _Why are you telling me this?_

**I only want to help you, my dear Link. Will you let me?**

Little by little, bit by bit, Link realizes that he’s slipping away. He just… doesn’t know if he should do something about it. What the voice is saying seems more important anyway. _How can you help me? I’ve lost so much._

**Do not worry. I can give everything back. I can make you happy again.**

_What… What are you going to give me?_ What’s left of him still has the wherewithal to wonder what he even wants. 

**Freedom.**

_I don’t… know what that means._ He’s heard of it. It sounds beautiful. He just… doesn’t think he remembers ever touching it. 

**Oh, Link. The freedom I offer can unshackle you from all your burdens. I can make you whole again. You’ll never have to worry about being the Hero again. Or failing to be one.**

_Oh. I… I’d like that. It sounds nice._

**That’s very good.**

And here, the voice sounds so _pleased_ with him that he can’t help but respond to it, like a helpless child. _They’re happy because of me,_ is the thought. The lukewarm fuzz of happiness is the last thing he feels. And when all else has done away, only that voice, that presence, is left remaining. 

In the emptiness of Himself, it is free to go and fill up all those faded spaces with something new. Something irresistible. 

**Then rise, my Knight. Rise – and take your new place in the world.**

Annihilation.

* * *

It starts with the whispers. Carried by the wind, sent in on the lips of overtaxed scouts who sway wearily on their feet. 

A new enemy, glimpsed only in the far distances, or sighted through cracks in the foliage. An enemy never before seen, except in the now empty spot by Princess Zelda's side. 

The silhouette of a young man. Malice burning pink in the scarring on his skin. He still wears the livery of the Royal Family, but he runs with the corrupted Guardians. 

It can’t be, they say, denial aching in their hearts. Surely this would be too cruel, if what the implications of the intel are true. Surely, they think, Hylia wouldn’t allow this to happen, on top of everything else. 

The Blood Moon rises. 

In the distance, a low roar swells into the air, getting louder with each monster revived. Thousands of enemies, joining their monstrous voices into one. As the night turns crimson, the Champions and their allies ready themselves at the Fort, ready to defend their walls with their lives. 

The monsters come, then the legion of infected guardians. And at the forefront of the army, a familiar face greets them. 

Link. Alive, when Zelda thought she’d seen him take his last breath. Yet there he stands upon the plain, resurrected from his battlefield grave. 

Silent, stone-faced as he had always seemed to be, before they learned what laid beyond that disciplined facade. Old blood soaked into his torn tunic. Blue eyes eaten up by a radioactive glow. The gold of his hair consumed by dark crimson, feathering out behind him in bloody locks. 

In his hand is a mockery of the Master Sword, a blade made up of glowing cerulean light, crackling at the edges like a faulty projector. Upon his other arm is a shield, twisted into existence from the swirling Malice, parodying the shields of the Hylian Royal Guard. 

“No,” Mipha whispers, voice trembling. “How can this be?” 

_“Calamity,”_ Urbosa hisses, face drawn into a violent scowl. 

Link exhales, and the black smog of Malice pours out of his mouth, sparking with embers of pink. 

Zelda and the Champions look upon him in confusion. In bewildered betrayal. In abject horror. 

The Hero of Hyrule, sworn protector of his Princess, loyal servant of his Goddess – leading Calamity’s army right to their doorstep.

* * *

Link’s strength is appreciable when he is fighting alongside them, but now when they are fighting _against_ him, it becomes fearsome, unreal, intimidatingly formidable. 

The might of the Hylian Champion, now turned against them. 

He has always been a good knight. An obedient soldier. The greatest swordsman the land has seen in centuries. _There will be songs written about you, I think,_ the Great Deku tree said, when he pulled the sword so many years ago. Link had been destined for the battlefield. 

They should not feel surprised, and yet they are still taken off guard. 

They try to talk to him. He does not respond. 

The shine of his eyes is unsettling. Too bright to be natural, two shades too saturated. His pupils flash red in the shadows, like an animal. There is no spirit in his gaze. No recognition. Nothing of the charming quiet knight who’d eaten Daruk’s rock roast on Revali’s dare. Who had told the goron he’d liked it, despite getting indigestion a few minutes later. 

Swordblight, he calls himself now. 

They fight. They have no choice. They suffer heavy losses that night. 

It is Urbosa who finally strikes a wound heavy enough to make the infected Link retreat with his forces. Urbosa tries to fortify herself against the guilt, but it’s difficult when it is the voice of her comrade who cries out in pain from the damage she deals with her own hands. 

In a swirl of black smog and pink embers, Link disappears into the shadows, dissatisfied snarl upon his scarred face. False dawn is already brightening the sky. 

It is quiet, in the aftermath. They recover their injured and inspect the new damages on the fort. 

_What are we going to do,_ is the question hanging over everyone’s heads, and already it sounds too hopeless, too despairing. It sounds like _there is nothing we can do,_ and it stings like salt on an open wound. 

Hope seems meager. As do their energy and resources. Their forces are weakening, their supplies steadily draining away, and Calamity’s army only grows more powerful. 

The awful memory of Link's corrupted form eats at their morale. The Hylian Champion stolen, his mind overwritten. Re-programmed as the guardians were. Physical proof that it is possible that the same will be done to the other Champions, if they ever fall in battle. 

_Swordblight,_ the Champions think, wretchedly, and grieve for the friend they once had.

* * *

It continues on as before. Sometimes he is there, sometimes he isn’t. 

Already their scouts are coming in with reports of the other domains being attacked, forces of monsters and guardians led by Swordblight. Although word hasn’t come yet of any of the strongholds falling, they all know that it is only a matter of time. 

The Champions come to a decision. It is a difficult decision. We need to end it, is the decision—it needs to end quickly.

* * *

Zelda stands by her mount at the fort’s entrance, doing one last gear check while she waits for the others to arrive with their own preparations for the road. One of the Sheikah soldiers on watch nearby starts to speak with her. 

“Do you think,” here the soldier hesitates, eyes darting up to her face for a blink-quick gauge of her expression, before returning somewhere to the middle distance. “Do you think you’ll be able to get the Hero back?” 

Zelda stares at him in surprise. The soldier seems a bit bashful under her scrutiny. 

“Forgive me, Princess, it’s just that… I was one of the people who brought you into the fort.” Though he has his face covering on, regret shows through in his eyes. “I keep thinking that if we’d just gotten there sooner, perhaps Champion Link wouldn’t have been... taken away.” 

The deep guilt in his voice takes Zelda by surprise, though now she’s thinking that it shouldn’t. She’s realizing quickly that her and the Champions’ feelings of regret over their fallen comrade don’t only extend to their circle. That many other people are also haunted by the thought that if they had been faster, or stronger, or had simply done _more_ , Link wouldn’t have been so easily captured by the enemy. If only they had just fought more, he wouldn’t be standing there on the other side of the walls, reeking of Malice. 

Behind her, the Master Sword gleams dully among her saddlebags. The only thing left of Link that Calamity hasn’t been able to touch. Despite knowing none of the other Champions can wield the legendary darkness-sealing blade, it had seemed wrong to leave it behind for the upcoming battle. 

“I can’t make any promises,” Zelda says in a quiet, determined voice. Movement to her right, and she catches the sight of the others coming to join her. Everyone is armed to the teeth. Everyone has prepared themselves for the upcoming battle. It will be hard, she knows. “But I’ll try my best.”

“That’s all we hope for,” the soldier replies and salutes her, in the old Sheikah way of honoring a warrior embarking on an important mission. “Good hunting, Princess. May the Goddess always smile upon you.” 

Zelda touches two fingers to her heart and taps twice, returning the soldier’s salute in her own way. “And you as well. Good hunting, faithful soldier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sneakily ticks up the chapter count by one...
> 
> Fair warning: I literally wrote this whole thing in 3 days with only the wikia and some youtube videos and absolutely no experience actually playing the game. time constraints due to irl schedule made me choose between playing video games and not writing, or writing and not playing. 
> 
> That said, if there’s anything ooc or wildly canon-illogical about this work, please consider letting me know in the comments!


	4. Demontower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy this last chapter. Absolutely. Kicked my butt. This really was supposed to be a quick fic but... that last scene was unexpectedly hard to write. And wow, what even is pacing anymore? Anyway, please enjoy :]
> 
> 28 Feb.2021 patch notes: the first three chapters have undergone minor edits. mostly link's conversation with calamity, as well as some wording changes and paragraph revisions for smoother reading.

The Champions ride out under the bright sunlight of Hylia’s domain. The height of day, when Calamity’s dominion is at its weakest. 

They carve a path straight to the castle. They fight through swarms of monsters, evading the guardians. They get to Castle Town – empty and destroyed – wading through the miasma of Malice, so thick in the air they’d choke on it if they aren’t careful. 

The castle walls are broken, glass shattered, stained by black and boiling magenta. At last, they arrive at their destination. Ready to fight Calamity Ganon. Ready to end it all. 

Then blue ignites into existence in the half-shadows of the entrance. 

The blade pulses and crackles, and the now-familiar glow is matched by luminescent pink roiling in scars, silhouetting a body they all recognize. Two bright eyes, staring at them from the darkness of the castle. Link. No. _Swordblight._

He blocks their way. They halt, conflicted. 

They can guess why he’s here. He is the castle’s last line of defense against the Champions. Their final obstacle before they can reach Calamity. Once again, they’re forced to face their former comrade in battle. 

Mipha is the one who steps forward first, sorrow in her eyes, the hopeful plea on her tongue. “Link! Hear us, please. Don’t make us fight you!” 

“Brother,” Daruk urges, “Come back to yourself.” 

“Open your eyes, Link, and see that you fight for the destruction of your kingdom,” Urbosa says, trying to appeal to the honorable knight they’d bonded to. “Remember the oaths you have sworn!” 

Like this, they run through the itinerary again, as they have done since their first encounter. Despite the lack of response all the previous times, despite failing to invoke any hint of Swordblight’s former identity, they can’t help but hope that maybe this time – _this time,_ they’ll be able to make him come to his senses. Make him remember the friends he has forsaken. The duty that he’s abandoned. 

“I thought you were at least stronger than this, Hero,” Revali spits out. He makes his words cut the most. He makes them scathe. He sharpens razor-edged arrows out of the sentences he says, in hopes that they would pierce through the smother of Malice. “Can’t even fight off Calamity’s influence. Playing its knight like some sort of pet. I would be ashamed.” 

He sees Swordblight blink, once. And for a second, Revali – Revali swears he sees a flicker of something different in those damning glowing eyes. Something lost, and scared. The confused struggle of someone who doesn’t understand why this is happening, why it’s happening to them, and can’t get away from it. 

For a brief, precious instant, they all see a sort of coherent terror flash over that Malice-violated face. Mipha gasps. Zelda dares to let herself _hope_ – and then. And then in the next second, it’s gone. Swordblight blinks once more, and resumes as though the last two seconds hadn’t even occurred. Hope aborted. 

Revali snarls, with all the rage and arrogance he can summon. Because he, too, is tired of this pointless strife against someone he does not see as an enemy. Despite his many taunting challenges to the Hylian Champion in the past, despite his insults, he has never wanted to fight as enemies. “At least have the decency to _resist_!” 

Two moments more, and finally Swordblight moves. Steady, robotic movements. He emerges, stepping out onto the cobbled path. 

They can’t help but stare, struck by horror. 

This is the first time, is the realization, that they’re seeing him without the clamor of other enemies or the night’s dark obscuring their sight. There he stands in plain sight. In the bright sunlight, the vision of him is somehow even worse. 

Now they can see him as he is: Ruined. Corroded. A twisted shade of the young man they once knew. 

When before he had only breathed Malice, now he _spills_ with it, as if Calamity has filled him up with so much of its physical will that it now overflows. 

Swordblight Link lifts his crackling blade, sinks into a painfully familiar stance, and opens his mouth. From his throat there comes a **_howl_** like no other. A monstrous sound that rattles hollowly from shredded vocal chords, piercing directly into their ears. It makes the air tremble. It puts ice in their blood. 

His battle cry. Once more, the fight begins. 

They charge him as one, because if conflict cannot be avoided then perhaps it can at least be quick. They exchange blow after blow. Spear against sword. Thunder and wind against shield. Indomitable defense against unrelenting attack. Somehow, _somehow_ , Swordblight is on even standing against all of the Champions. 

Attack. Block. Dodge. Parry. Something dreadful sets into their chests as they recognize those movements. The patterns they’ve familiarized themselves with after countless sparring sessions with their knight. Evade. Jump. Twist. Land. Even if those habits are now augmented with the raw power of Malice, threading its influence through bone and muscle. Even if the Link of then never had this inhuman, savage strength that they now find themselves facing. 

They fight him, and more and more they begin to understand what manner of atrocity has been done to him. 

Deconstructed and dismantled. All his quirks of identity erased. His free will, eaten away until all that remains is his fundamental sense of unwavering loyalty, devotion, and courage. Everything stripped from him, like feathers from a bird, or petals from a flower, until Calamity had exactly what it wanted in its grasp. Until he became Calamity’s greatest Knight. 

They look at him, and see this: He fights in misery. 

No matter what grievous manner of injury they inflict upon him, it doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. He’s grown noticeably more corrupted since their first encounter. No blue to be seen in the wrecked Champion’s tunic he still wears. The gunk of Malice seeps out of his mouth, his nose, leaking from his glowing eyes like tears of black tar. It splatters the ground with its excess, bathes everything around him in a blood-magenta glare. The air around him warps visibly with the dark particles he releases with every rasping breath. 

He bleeds black, though not for long. Any wounds he recieves are nearly instantaneously healed, stitched back together by wisps of black smog, running over his skin like toxic honey. He wears no armor like the other Blights born from the Divine Beasts, and his pink-splintered flesh splits open under their weapons just as easily as any natural creature. But he is indestructible nonetheless. 

Their useless efforts are proven fact when Revali, in a fit of true anger, true despair, aims and strikes true. His arrow lodges itself right at the base of Link's skull. 

Someone cries out – shock, dismay – and Link crumples, like a puppet whose strings have been cut, because that arrow in that location should have severed his spinal cord. It should’ve been an act of instant death. 

But the black and pink tar of Calamity slithers over him, like a living disease. His limbs twitch. His body bends unnaturally, as if his rib cage is being plucked up by an invisible grasp. And then he gets back to his feet, as dead-eyed and deadly as before. 

That even death will not release him from this fate, they think, is probably the worst thing about it all. That no matter what they do, Calamity will only keep bringing him back, over and over. Refusing to let him rest. Knitting his broken body back together and forcing him to fight endlessly, like an eternal nightmare. 

It is not lost upon them that this is what Link has been doing even before he fell to Calamity’s corruption. Forced to lift his sword, to keep fighting in spite of his own will. Continuously ignoring the limits of his body. Pretending that he is something other than a person, as vulnerable and fragile as anyone else. Only before, he’d done it in service of Hyrule, and he had been taught to do it to himself. 

Oh yes, the irony is not lost on them.

* * *

They come terrifyingly close to losing. It is hard, bitterly and cruelly hard, to truly fight against someone they still consider to be their comrade. How can they, when he still fights so familiarly? 

Link is a trusted ally, a dear friend, a brother in all but blood. And they are the Champions – loyal and noble by default. Though distinct in personality and appearance, the very core of their nature is to protect and fight for their allies. It is precisely why they have been chosen for their titles. Every wound they inflict upon him only strikes a feeling of utter wrongness in themselves in return. This is what makes them falter. 

This small hesitation lodged in their guts is what softens the impacts of Daruk’s Boulder Breaker. It is what causes the Spear to skitter in Mipha’s hands. The Great Bow to sing with a discordant twang with every volley Revali releases. Urbosa’s dance with her Scimitar to fall a step out of rhythm. 

One by one, they realise the truth of it: They are not capable of killing this Link. Even when he fights them as Swordblight. 

When it seems like all hope is lost, when every Champion is heaving with fatigue, scattered with wounds from blows they did not manage to avoid, it is Zelda who steps past them. 

Determination in her eyes. A decision made. She steps into the fray and stares down the sight of her corrupted knight charging toward her with his sword raised, the intent to kill in his empty eyes. Zelda, with all the divine might of the goddess, with sacred light radiant in her skin, pooling like liquid gold in her arms. Clutched in her bright-shining hands – is the Master Sword. 

There is a reason why, she knows from her studies, that the sword is often called The Blade of Evil’s Bane in the archaic texts. 

She reaches out – and ends it. 

The world flashes impossibly bright, and at the epicenter of it, Swordblight _screams_. 

Calamity is ripped viciously from his body. Its claws sunken into him are smote out of existence. All traces of Malice burned away in a single blinding instant, and leaving only Link in its place. He collapses. Blood spills forth. 

They rush forward, but he is already moving. Writhing on the ground and clutching feebly at the sword impaling him through his gut before Mipha kneels and grabs his wrists to prevent him from doing further damage. Even as one of the smallest of the Champions, Mipha does this easily, because Link is so grievously injured they can’t tell which part of him isn’t. 

Those swirling marks – so reminiscent of the motifs that all Ancient Technology feature – that had burned so bright in his flesh are now fresh wounds, open and bleeding profusely. The dark tar of Malice has disappeared from his body, but now it is steadily being replaced by the deep crimson of his own lifeblood. They don’t know how he isn’t dead already, but it doesn’t seem to matter because he looks like he’s about to be soon. 

“Don’t move,” Mipha says, crystalline tears slipping down her face. She bows her head, letting her tears drop from her chin, unable to wipe them away when her hands are already occupied with holding onto Link. “Please, don’t move – just, just breathe, please. I can help you –” 

Urbosa is the next to reach them, and immediately she kneels down to pull the Master Sword out of him, knowing full well that Mipha can’t start healing with it still in. The blade burns in her hand, but she takes a hold of it firmly and doesn’t let go until it’s clear of him. She doesn’t stop, even at the hoarse, strangled cry of pain Link makes at her. 

It feels like an hour passes until the Master Sword pulls free from its wielder's body. Urbosa lets it drop to the side, palms stinging, and then it’s Mipha’s turn. 

Her Grace wells out of her, like a gentle bloom, unfolding. Like a kiss upon the brow, like a warm embrace in a blizzard storm. They all feel the sheer power she puts into it. How desperately she wants him to live. The worth of a thousand mercies she crams into her healing gift, when she wraps it carefully around Link. 

The noise that comes out of him is inhuman. His back arches, his lips draw back, expose gritted teeth, pink gum, and he cries out in such great torment Mipha’s Grace stutters to a shuddering halt. 

Mipha lets out a sob, as her power fades away. She can tell that it’s helped in some way, in some incremental degree. He’s bleeding less and the marks are shallower. But he is still dying. Perhaps she’s only drawn out his pain longer. “No...” she moans, even as her hands clamp down around the oozing wound, “Why… why won’t it work?” 

Zelda stiffens, her quick mind going through hypotheses and estimations at lightning speed. She hopes she isn’t right, but enough evidence points to one theory being true. That Link has been changed, irreversibly and fundamentally, in the brief time that he was infected by Calamity. That he has been changed, just enough, that sacred light and healing grace reject his body. This is the true curse that Calamity had been aiming for – the permanent ruin of their Hero. 

But at the moment, they don’t need him to be the Hero. They just need him to live. 

Link stares up at them sightlessly. Blue eyes dart wildly from point to point, glazed over and fever-bright. He gasps wetly as Mipha puts pressure on his wound, trying to keep him from bleeding out, or at least slowing down the process. The choked sounds that fall from his lips are heartbreaking to hear. The soft, bitten noises of someone in terrible pain. 

He looks… young. Young and exhausted. 

And fragile. They’ve seen the Hylian Champion injured and bloody and tried many times before, but this is the first time that they look at him and notice how fractured, how _small_ he is. Struggling to breathe as he lies on the ground, shivering in Mipha’s gentle hands. 

They look upon Link’s broken-winged body. This is the sight of a person dying, they realise. 

Urbosa reaches with careful movements to take him into her arms. She feels his pulse flutter against his skin like a little bird. Listens to the helpless noises he makes. Feels the warm of his blood seep slowly onto her skirt. 

She cradles him, quietly agonized, and wishes she could wrap this poor boy up and take him away to somewhere where he’d never be hurt again. Gather this small, battered soul into her fold and never let the pain of the world touch him again. She wishes she can do anything more than to watch the life slowly bleed out of him. 

Zelda falls to her knees beside them. Daruk draws in close, afraid to reach out with his boulder-breaking hands, when Link looks as if he’s already falling apart. “Hold on, brother,” he says softly, like he thinks even the deep rumble of his voice may shatter the trembling glass of the Hero. “You just hang in there. We’ll find a way to save you, so don’t leave us just yet.” 

And Link – Link seems to regain his focus a little, painstakingly drawing himself from the brink of delirium with an almost physical effort. He looks at Urbosa, who still holds him like something precious. The tears on Mipha’s face. Daruk’s anguished worry. 

He looks at Zelda. She sucks in a breath at the pure, blind trust he still favors her with. The steady gaze of her unendingly faithful Knight, who gave himself fully to her and still looks to her obediently on his deathbed. After everything, after she’s failed him so much and for so long, that he is still able to find it within himself to forgive her is nearly unimaginable. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. She doesn’t deserve such faith. She doesn’t deserve him. “I am so, so, sorry, Link…” 

She can’t take her eyes off the blood seeping through the cracks between Mipha’s fingers. “I thought – I wouldn’t have...” 

But she knows that she still _would_ have. Because purging Calamity is a task done in two parts. A process that has been repeated enough times throughout history that it’s become self-made logic. The Master Sword strikes the evil down. The blood of the Goddess seals it away. There is no chance it would’ve worked if Zelda had only used her sacred light. 

Link’s hands twitch, his chapped lips part in a clear attempt to speak. All that comes forth is a hoarse whisper, slurred by numb tongue. “Don’t,” he mumbles out with visible effort. “I… _tried_ –” He takes another shuddering, shallow breath. 

“N-need to...” he starts again, and the miserable expression on his face is a sight they all know, like he has too many thoughts to say and no words with which to speak them. Before, he would’ve been frustrated with himself. Now he only looks tired. 

Tired enough that he seems to decide to discard all the things he wants to say, cut out the filling, and simply arrive at the final conclusion. “I’m – sorry.“ 

What Link is apologizing for, no one is really sure. For being controlled by Calamity, maybe, even though none of it was really his fault. Perhaps for all of the things he must’ve done, all of the times he’s fought his own allies, as Swordblight. He’d also be the type of person to apologize for being unable to fight alongside them in the upcoming confrontation. For failing to _fulfill his duty_ because he’s already preoccupied with dying from blood loss. 

Out of all the wounds littering his body, the one he actually looks pained for is this thing that he’s saying sorry for. He wants so badly to make it right, to correct this wrong that he thinks he’s done, but he’s too tired. So he just resigns himself to the failure. 

“Are you kidding me?” Revali’s voice comes out of the blue, clear and incredulous. While the rest of the Champions had crowded around Link, he’d held himself apart from them, deigning to watch from afar. Only now does he come closer. He’s rolling his eyes. “Hylia spare me from melodramatic swordsmen. The only thing you should be apologizing for is how your body doesn’t seem to understand that blood is supposed to stay on the inside. 

“Or are you insinuating the rest of the Champions are not capable of fighting Ganon without you to lead us by the hand through the entire battle?” He flings a wing out dismissively, “Please, you're hardly that special. I’ll take on Calamity Ganon myself. And I’ll end that bastard with more grace and elegance than you can ever hope to pull off with that clunky sword of yours. We don’t need _you_.” 

The rest of them are taken entirely aback with his words, spoken so harshly in such a situation, before Revali takes another breath that just happens to be a little shaky at the edges. His glare suddenly permanently affixed to the far distance, anywhere but towards the faces staring at him, he continues, “You can – you can stay back. If you can manage to avoid dying anytime soon, the others would certainly appreciate it. Just… rest. For fuck’s sake.” 

And Link just smiles. It’s bloody and his face is pale, he already looks like a ghost of himself, but the smile that spreads across his lips is full of fond exasperation. It’s a hidden side of himself that he’s never shown to Revali before, he’s never revealed that the initial hurt and sting of Revali’s provocations had transformed into a sort of vaguely affectionate, irritated attachment by the time they’ve made it to the Spring on Mount Lanaryu. Seeing it out of the corner of his eye, it strikes Revali to the core with shock. It eats him alive. 

Because Link does exactly what Revali told him to do. His blue eyes slip closed, and he lets out a soft breath, lets his head drop fully into the cradle of Urbosa’s arms. Link looks so relieved. Limp with relief. Ready to let his broken body finally rest. 

Mipha lets out a soft, gut-wrenching noise. Revali’s eyes widen. 

“Link –“ 

There’s a chime nearby. It echoes unnaturally into their minds, high and clear, as if they’re hearing it within themselves rather than with their ears. 

_Save him._

Zelda looks over. She sees the Master Sword on the cobblestones, still stained by Link’s blood. It’s glowing softly. “The… sword…?” she murmurs almost absently in bewilderment. 

_Give my master another chance to live. True life._

It’s a voice that comes from nowhere but inside their heads, genderless and otherworldly, but still they can tell that it calls to them from the Master Sword. Or rather, the ancient spirit that inhabits the legendary blade. It’d been thought a myth, until now. 

_The Shrine of Resurrection. Save him._

“Oh,” Urbosa murmurs. Mipha turns her tear-brimming gaze towards Zelda, such bitter hope on her face that Zelda can’t stop the mirrored response blooming within herself even if she tried. 

"Wait, Link," Zelda can’t help herself from taking one of his hands into her own. His skin is so cold. Ice beneath her fingers. He barely reacts. "Wait for us. The Shrine of Resurrection heals all wounds, no matter how grave. I’ve studied it before. It is pure technology, involving no magic or divinity. We’ll bring you there. We will, so just _wait_.” 

“I’ll take him there,” Revali declares suddenly. 

They stare at him. Feeling the vague astonishment contained in their gazes, he barely restrains himself from puffing up in defense. “Obviously, I am superior in speed with aerial travel. Though it should be beneath me, I shall allow you to strap the hero to my back so that I may carry him to this healing shrine.” 

He hides behind confidence and flourishes of words, but even they can tell that it is a pale mimicry of his usual easy arrogance. Regret subdues his spirit. Guilt whittles the edges of his bluster. “Rest assured, my wings are swift, my eyes are keen. You’ll find no other Rito with such mastery over the winds as I do. You should be suitably honored.” 

So Zelda gives him the Sheikah slate and tells him where to find the two scholars who will know how to operate the Shrine. Or at least the theoreticals of it. The Shrine of Resurrection has not been used in hundreds of years. 

“Keep him safe,” Daruk bids him, and hefts his weapon on his back. “We’ll be here waiting for you.” 

Revali is quiet for a moment, as he shifts his body, adjusting to the extra weight on his back. “Then I suppose I can’t keep you waiting for too long,” he says, and takes into the air with a powerful flap of his wings and a buffeting gust of wind. WIthin a few seconds, his flying form is merely a dot in the distance.

* * *

They barely defeat Calamity by the skin of their teeth. Nonetheless it is their victory. 

Hyrule celebrates. Their princess rises to true royal leadership. The Champions return to their respective domains to help with restoration efforts. 

Alongside the celebration comes another story, first carried by the mouths of the returning warriors, and then passed along through murmurs and the extensive rumor mills of the land. Like a warning, or a child’s bedtime story, it is a tale that whispers this: 

_Don’t forget._

Don’t forget that there is a fifth Champion. The Hylian Champion, who did not return. 

There is a boy who they had called the Hope of Hyrule, and he had been smothered beneath that hope. A child called Hero, who had given himself wholly to the name, until there was nothing left of him. 

No great gift ever comes without great cost. For certain, this great victory lives on his great sacrifices. 

It is a story that is passed from parent to child, grandparent to grandchild. Beginning from the generation who survived the Great Calamity, this new warning tale now accompanies the ancient legends of the Hero and the Goddess. 

Now the fallen Hero sleeps the Slumber of Restoration, healing his broken spirit and body. One day he will be ready to rejoin the world. One day, they hope, Hyrule will be able to thank him properly. 

Until then, they restore, they remember, and they wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stabbed Link with his own sword. Ouch. I am very sorry. But I had to have a reason for the master sword to be on scene for Fi to yell her battery low chime at them. 
> 
> Another reason why there was such a large gap between updates is because I started playing the game in that time. And got hooked. 
> 
> Writing that final scene before the epilogue blurb was really hard. It was getting… really long. And a bit pretentious. I was writing, trying to cram in all the procedural steps and lines of dialogue that needed to happen, and I was just like, wow. Link is taking an impressively long time to die. But hopefully you guys can suspend disbelief just enough because I really wanted to write a tragic oh no don’t die scene with link and all his friends. 
> 
> So anyway, when Link wakes up again all his friends will probably be like super old grannies and grandpas (except for Mipha because Zora longevity), and they'll watch from afar with bittersweet happiness as link rediscovers the world again as a bright and curious amnesiac teenager who just happens to be a master swordsman. He'll rescue travelers from monsters and they'll all be in stupefied awe because this kid with epic scars just crashed out of the forest chucking glowing bombs and swinging weapons wildly and then he just silently ran in circles picking up all the loot before disappearing into the distance. He'll have the time of his life without any recollection of any of the horrible things that happened to him. Mipha and Sidon will befriend him again and Sidon will shower him in compliments in his classic fashion. Zelda and Impa will send Sheikah warriors to secretly dispose of any Yiga that might be creeping around Link. He'll meet this grouchy old Rito who can't stop harping on about things were like "back in the day." Everyone will know sign. Gramps Daruk gets to rearrange Link's spine with a back slap just like the old times. Grannie Urbosa will nearly cry with laughter when Link comes into town with his disguise. They all live happily ever after.


End file.
